Adapt! How to Survive and Thrive in the Changing World of Work

Introduction

Have the massive changes taking place today caught you unprepared? Does today’s world of work seem like a bizarre caricature of what you expected when you started your career? In a world where jobs have become commodities, are you among the many people asking, How will I survive?

Our message to you is, yes, you will survive. You can even learn to thrive in this change filled world of work.

This book was born in a small writer’s group hosted by John Hall in Irvine, California. We had no charter to change the world. We simply wanted to improve our writing skills. Our projects were diverse, ranging from articles to marketing materials and book projects.

In such an intimate group, we quickly got to know each other and found that we shared similar career paths and fascinating work experiences, some good; some not-so-good. These experiences made us who we are today. As we quickly discovered, none of us planned in the beginning to end up in our present careers. They evolved naturally. So did this book.

After much trial and error, we realized that our careers, and most successful careers, are based on several powerful insights: Adapt to situations, learn from past triumphs and mistakes, be passionate about what you do, and above all else, be true to yourself.

We didn’t intend to write this book. However, as we realized the power these ideas had in our lives, we knew we had to share them. We invited other successful people, who have adapted and thrived, to contribute their stories.

This book will expand your thinking about how to adapt. It collects the experiences and insights of real people - people with different backgrounds, aspirations, careers, and jobs, who struggled with hard questions, found inspiration, made progress, made mistakes, and learned about the world of work and themselves along the way.

In Section One, you will read about our career experiences.

In Section Two, we share wisdom and strategies that will ease your career transitions.

In Section Three, we present advanced strategies that many of us have used successfully.

As you read this book, start to build your self knowledge. Success means different things to different people. Get clear on your definition of success. Is it lots of money? Holding down a prestigious position? Helping others? Discovering a cure for cancer? Once you are clear, ask yourself this question, How do I get from where I am today to where I want to be?

Should you change jobs? Find a new profession? Change industries? Go back to school? Start a business? You may not think you need such a drastic change, but industry problems, market conditions, new technologies, management mistakes, competitors, or an unbearable boss may force you onto a new path. Ready or not, sooner or later, change happens.

We’ve found that many important changes in our lives were not planned. They happened in spite of our plans. As you deal with your life circumstances, remember, you are not alone. While there are no set answers that work for everyone, you will find that, like life, your career is a journey and that you can choose to set the direction.

As you read the following chapters, absorbing the lessons and principles can help you navigate your career journey. Collectively, we have made almost every mistake possible (at least the big ones) and have thrived in spite of, and because of, our experiences. You can too. You always have choices – often more than you realize. Learn from our experiences, then Adapt!

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Section One

How We Got Here

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Chapter One

What Career?

By Charlotte Backman

I only remember one thing about career planning in high school. Our teacher asked us to research all aspects of a career we might like to pursue – such as the required education, potential employers, and average salaries. I picked massage therapy. I may as well have picked race car driver because no one took my choice seriously. In fact, nobody discussed my choice at all – they ignored it, or as I imagined the adults saying, gently steered me in a different direction.

Back in 1973 people still lumped massage therapy in with adult entertainment in the phone book and considered it much too risqué a profession for a wholesome middle class girl from the suburbs of Orange County.

So, having no idea what I wanted to do, other than learn more stuff about people and life, I applied to college like the rest of my friends and headed off to UCLA to get myself an English degree. My college experience exposed me to a much bigger world than my sequestered life in Tustin had allowed. I learned to think about big issues in a different way, changed my religion, changed my politics, and changed my beliefs about what I could do and who I was. At graduation, however, I still had no idea what career would satisfy me for the rest of my working days. Most of my friends in the liberal arts crowd didn’t know either. Those serious science and pre-med students, who knew the career they wanted to pursue, were far away on the other side of campus.

I don’t remember how I got my first job in the real world – doing copywriting and paste-up for a small real estate firm run by an arrogant, insensitive jerk. After I worked for four months at minimum wage, the jerk laid me off two weeks before Christmas, along with the rest of his meager staff. He told us he would hire us back after the holidays. That way he wouldn’t have to pay us vacation days. He complained mightily when I filed for unemployment insurance because employers have to pay a percentage. What an arrogant, insensitive, cheap jerk. I never went back.

However, it did lead to a job in advertising, a definite step up the career ladder. At the tiny agency, everyone’s job title had slashes: President/Creative Director/Account Executive, Vice President/Account Executive/Bookkeeper/Media Buyer, and me, Everything Else plus some of theirs too. We all got along well, I learned about the advertising business, and felt like a responsible adult for the first time. After three years the agency grew, hired a new president, and I was out, just in time to sign up for a job under my favorite boss, my Dad.

Dad was a contractor in Orange County. He had a small regular crew and had just gotten a job remodeling a beautiful home on the water in Newport Beach. Since the project would take many months to complete, I signed up, strapping on my tool belt every morning and learning as I went. I’m good with my hands – that’s why I wanted to be a massage therapist – and I highly recommend demolishing a kitchen as one of the great stress relievers of all time. Mostly I did menial work, cleaned up after the guys, and appreciated the time I spent with my dad.

It would seem like getting a job on a construction crew would be a detour from my advertising career path, but that would assume I’d decided on a career path. In truth I still had no idea where I was going. In the meantime, I got married and moved back to Orange County, where a young couple could still buy a home.

This led directly to my next job: Order Administrator in a Hewlett-Packard sales office. When my husband and I settled into our new house (actually a 1925 fixer-upper), I drew a circle around the house on the map with a compass. I had had enough of freeways in Los Angeles, and I refused to commute long distance if I could avoid it. It was icing on the cake that HP was considered one of the best companies to work for; I liked it because it was 10 minutes from my house. Now there’s a smart way to choose a job, huh? Lucky for me, it worked out, and I spent the next nine years there, learning and moving up through various administrative jobs. However, when the company downsized and offered me a severance package, it should be no surprise that I took it and moved on.

I suppose I could have gritted my teeth, looked ahead to a cozy retirement package, and stayed in the corporate world. However, three years before I left HP, life sent me a wake-up call. My husband’s mother was diagnosed with a brain tumor and six months later she died. She had been healthy and happy and then she was gone. I realized that nothing prevented that from happening to me too. I thought, Am I really happy? What would I regret not doing if I died tomorrow? Massage therapy, here I come.

By the 1980s, massage therapy had become a respectable job with plenty of training programs in traditional and holistic methods. I started a part-time practice after work and on weekends, carting my massage table to people’s homes and offices and soothing their tired, stressed muscles. I got referrals from a chiropractor, didn’t have to advertise, and had very little overhead. And most important, I was finally doing something useful and meaningful. I made my clients feel better. Maybe I’m meant to be in the healing professions, I thought.

Many of my clients experienced emotional as well as physical release when I massaged them. Since I’d always been interested in psychology, I decided that I could facilitate healing on more than a physical level and enrolled in a two-year certification course in body-mind psychotherapy. As life would have it, I graduated from that course the same month I left HP. All at once it felt like I had an open road ahead of me. I was 38 years old, childless, separated from my husband, and free to recreate my life.

The next month my Dad fell and broke a hip, had prostate surgery, and spent the next two years in and out of nursing homes and hospitals. My mother and I took turns visiting him regularly. After he died, my grandmother went into a nursing home and Mom and I did the same for her. Perhaps all that caretaking, although done willingly, made me think again about whether I wanted a life devoted to healing. Although I had only a part-time massage practice, I was burned out. I stopped massaging, got a part-time job in a property management office, treaded water, and waited for inspiration.

I belong to a group that meets every Wednesday morning at UC Irvine called the Inside Edge. About 100 people gather to eat breakfast and listen to speakers on topics such as psychology, spirituality, business and culture. One day the topic was Art as a Spiritual Practice. The speaker was a local Laguna Beach artist who specialized in painting mandalas, a type of spiritual art from India. I signed up right away for the speaker’s next workshop, making mandalas on black paper with colored pencils.

I loved it. A whole wonderful world opened up before me. However, since I’d received a C in art in high school, I was skittish and shy about making art. I spent the next year playing with acrylic paints, doing whatever I felt like and not showing it to anyone but my husband and a handful of people I trusted. I wanted to find my own way, with no one to influence the process with praise or criticism. Finally I felt ready to take another class, this time a week of painting at a retreat in Northern California. The mandala I painted there was the first of more than 200, and the surprising beginning of a new career in making and teaching art. Wait, what am I saying? If a career is something you expect to do for the rest of your working life, then it’s my first career, and it didn’t begin until I was 40.

If I were to mentor someone just graduating or anyone who didn’t have a clue about what would sustain their whole physical/emotional/spiritual being throughout their life, first I’d ask some questions.

What have you always liked to do, no matter what anyone else thinks of the process or the product?

What motivates you to get up in the morning or keeps you up late at night because you are so excited about doing it?

Second, I’d say do it, and do whatever else you have to do to keep doing it, as long as it is deeply sustaining. Whether or not it can or will become a career is beside the point. Wait tables while you write your novel. Practice law while you study to be an herbalist. If something doesn’t feel quite right, keep exploring and experimenting. Don’t get hung up about what your friends or relatives or your own inner critic say you should or shouldn’t do. Whose life is it? (OK, if your burning desire is to, say, rob banks, listen to your mother on that one and pick something else.) Keep curious and let life reveal its wonders to you. They will unfold like flowers if you are patient and persistent.

Sometimes life feels all wrong and you tell yourself you’re a loser or a no-talent mess who is going nowhere and destined to be miserable the rest of your life. Maybe you will, but chances are very good you won’t. Here’s the bottom line: life will not turn out like you planned. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’re still guaranteed to get somewhere, and it may not be that bad a place to end up! Trust the journey and make it a good journey.

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Chapter Two

If I’m so Smart, Why Is My Career Such a Mess?

By John Hall

Slam-bam—the question, If I’m So Smart, Why Is My Career Such a Mess? struck my brain like a bolt of lighting as I drove home from a decade long job as the manager of a clinical laboratory in Newport Beach, California. In some ways the question didn’t make sense. After all I had achieved much of the American Dream: nice home, money in the bank, investments that were going well, and a loving, supportive wife. However, it became all too clear after that question infected my brain that my career was a mess because it was founded on a series of potluck decisions based on opportunities of the moment.

Quiet Desperation

I did not have a career; I had a series of jobs, and to paraphrase Henry David Thoreau, I led a life of quiet desperation. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle the work, either intellectually or physically, or wasn’t making enough money. The work held no joy or personal satisfaction for me. The thought of spending another 30 years doing the same work was mind numbing.

Reflecting back on that long ago drive home, I realized that I had spent more time planning vacations and my social life than my career. If only I had known at 18 what I knew at 35. However, life doesn’t work that way. More often than not we make our most important decision, the selection of what may well become our life’s work, as a pimply faced adolescent, without the life experience, knowledge or guidance to make an informed choice.

You Have To Major In Something.

The majority of men and women, from PhDs to dropouts, drift along, ending up where the stream of their lives takes them, taking the course of least resistance in their careers. I was no exception. When I graduated from high school, I enrolled at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life so had no idea what to major in. As a result I took all the required courses, like math, English, social studies, physical education, ROTC, history and a bunch of electives. I also dabbled at three majors, Geology, Secondary Education, and Biology. After about two and a half years a counselor called me into his office and said, Kid, if you ever expect to graduate, you are going to have to major in something. So, after an in-depth, twelve-minute review of my transcript, the counselor said, It looks to me like biology with a minor in history is your best option.

Great, I said, and off I went to get a degree majoring in biology with a minor in history.

No problem, I’m smart—and I Have a Profession!

A semester before completing my degree, a buddy told me that the College of Medicine was looking for biology majors for a one-year training program in a new, specialized area of medical technology, cytology. Neither one of us knew what cytology was, but if they accepted us, they would pay us well during the training and guarantee us a job when we completed the course. It was not yet an accredited degree program but we were assured that it soon would be accredited. Thirty biology majors applied, twelve were accepted, and ten of us graduated from the training. I then did almost two years of cancer research at Ohio State University’s pediatric hospital.

Cytology, this new area of medical technology, was accredited for both bachelors and masters degrees at Ohio State University several years after I moved to southern California. I did not want to go back to Ohio State for the three to six months needed to finish the newly accredited degrees. Technically I was a well-educated degreeless nincompoop. No big deal. I was young and smart—I’d take care of that little problem—someday.

My first job in research wasn’t my idea of a long-term career. However, it fell into my lap and I was young and had plenty of time to figure out how to get on the right track. No big deal, I thought. I am smart. I’ll know when the right opportunity comes along. In less than a year I had a nice apartment, a sports car, and a great social life with lots of pretty young ladies to date. The job wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, but I knew something would come along. I was smart and had a professional education.

Hey, it’s a No Brainer.

One day I received a phone call from a college buddy, a technician in a hospital laboratory in Peoria, Illinois. He said they needed a cytology technician and it paid a lot more money than I was currently making—so I was off to Peoria. No career planning, no thinking about how this job might impact my career long term. Six months later, someone I met at a professional meeting offered me a position in a private lab in Newport Beach, California. Wow, California—sun, the beach, beautiful girls in bikinis, and the job paid even more! This was a no brainer—so it was California, here I come!

Quiet Desperation

Several years after arriving in California, I met and married Nancy, a bright, understanding, lovely schoolteacher from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Soon we had a nice home, a mortgage, nice vacations, car